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Consumer Reports is out with its top picks for 2014 vehicles, with Tesla's Model S taking top honors as "best overall." The pricey Tesla is among four new winners this year, with the others in the categories of midsize SUVs, small SUVs, and pickups, notes USA Today. Here are the 10 top winners:

I do take some comfort in the #1 car is US-built (in California, no less!) and doesn't use gasoline or diesel. Granted it is new and pricey, but the technology is proven (Tesla sports cars have been on the road for years). If Elon Musk wasn't battling the entrenched Big Three (oops, Big Two + FIAT), we migfht be farther along the new highway. If I could afford a Tesla, I'd definitely be driving one but for now, its a Ford C-Max.

StationaryMan

Feb 26, 2014 6:52 AM CST

Way back in the 1980's I was reading a consumer reports magazine in the library( for you youngsters that's a place that lends books and magazines, for free) and reading about 2 cars one was a US car, a Chevy I think and the other was a Honda. The Chevy they said had a way too high trunk lip and they showed someone struggling to lift a suitcase into the trunk, the trunk lid took up a great deal of the writing. The Honda they said was perfect with no mention of the trunk lid, but if you bothered reading the specs you realized the Honda trunk lid was a quarter inch higher. The Honda was recommended, the Chevy not. I have never trusted Consumer Reports since.

WLeoB

Feb 26, 2014 6:34 AM CST

1. Let this old curmudgeon engineer tell you that this "report" is not statistically valid. For example, I think there are less than 1,000 tesla's on the road even after it is subsidized and nobody has put enough miles on them to show how costly they will be to repair and maintain after 100,000 miles. Perfect poster child for political correctness. 2. With no end in sight to this depression that nobody is talking about, the prices of used cars in the last three years have gone up. Why? Because fewer and fewer individuals can afford new cars. Instead, they wait for sales and auctions of used cars that are reliable after 100,000 miles. Hint, that's when the nonproductive and bloated public sector unloads their fleets, bought new of course, with taxpayers money. 3. Just give people reliability and low operating costs. That's something the CU doesn't report on. This writer had a ford diesel powered car in the 1980s and got 43 miles per gallon in the city and about 48 miles per gallon on the highway. But alas, the American public prefers getting up to speed fast and turn their noses up at gas mileage. We also don't produce the low sulfur diesel fuel that they do in Europe where the tax treatment is more favorable to diesel engines because of the much better fuel economy. 4. Want a 50 mpg car? They'd be available in short order if we refined better diesel fuel and took the tax penalties off of diesel fuel. But alas, the incumbent members of our two ruling parties are worried about reelection, have attorney backgrounds and dance to those that would add even more required options to vehicles that merely fail after a few years on the road.